Monday, September 10, 2012

To paraphrase an old proverb, beware newspaper columnists bearing
advice. That certainly applies to John Ibbitson’s column in the Globe this morning, where he takes the Liberal Party to task for setting a 41 day cutoff
for supporter (and member) sign-ups to be eligible to vote in the leadership
race next April.

…that privilege will end 41 days before the April
14 vote is announced. Mike Crawley, the party’s president, explained Sunday
that the party had decided to make the cutoff for both supporters and members
that far in advance, so that lists could be finalized, checked for possible
acts of fraud, and then shared with all candidates.

For one thing, Ibbitson betrays a lack of understanding of
the process. The national board didn’t set the cutoff date for supporters, the
members did. It was part of the constitutional amendment we passed in January
that created the supporter category, and amended the constitution to include
this requirement for voting eligibility, section (63)(2)(A):

been a supporter of
the Party for the 41 days immediately preceding the day of the Leadership Vote;

This applies to both supporters and members. So this was
part of the system as passed by the delegates Ibbitson praised in January, and
the national board can’t override it without asking the membership to pass a
constitutional amendment, which given the timing would require an extraordinary
convention like we held last summer on the leadership timeline.

That bit of process aside, even if it was feasible, doing
away with the cutoff or putting it mere days before the vote, as Ibbitson seems
to propose, would be an absolutely horrible idea that would be setting up the
party for a bungled leadership vote. And I’m sure Ibbitson and his fellow
pundits would have some buzz-killing fun with that.

Much of the future of the party is riding both on the
success of this leadership vote and the supporter system, and it’s important
that we get both right. And it’s important that everyone have confidence in the
fairness and accuracy of the system.

And with a pool of potentially hundreds of thousands of
voters, the party will need to build and design a voting process (either
online, phone, mail-in or physical polls, TBD) with the capacity to handle the
possible turnout and conduct the vote in a fair, transparent, open and
efficient manner.

Accomplishing both of these things will take time, which
makes the 41 day window between the sign-up cutoff and voting day essential. It
will take time to complete the vetting of possible voters, and ensure the
capacity to allow them all to vote is there (the media savaged the NDP for the delays in their leadership vote due to a denial of service attack).

Ibbitson, who spent a lot of time covering U.S. politics and
often lets it influence his writing, wants a primary-style system. But he
should be familiar enough with U.S. primaries to know that, despite the
messaging by some when proposing it, the Liberal proposal was never that close to
U.S.-style primaries. And no party can realistically adopt such a system on
their own, for reasons varying from lack of resources to the need to prevent
participating in different party’s processes. A proper primary system would see
an impartial body such as Elections Canada registering Canadians for parties or
as independents, and managing the votes in a non-partisan manner.

Until the unlikely day when all parties agree to buy into
such a non-partisan managed system, cutoff dates to allow for verification of
details and the provisioning of vote casting resources will be necessary. It’s
the only way to run the vote fairly and without chaos.

And as for Ibbitson’s patronizing endnote…

Perhaps the federal
party leadership failed to notice that the Liberal Party was defeated in the
Quebec provincial election last week even as the Liberal government in B.C. was
pummelled by a string of cabinet ministers announcing they would not be running
in the next election and the Ontario Liberals failed to win a by-election that
would have given Dalton McGuinty a majority government. The Liberals are
running out of things to run.

… he may have failed to notice that the “Liberal government
in B.C.” hasn’t been overly Liberal for some time and is riddled with former
Stepen Harper advisors. He may have failed to notice that Jean Charest is a
former Progressive Conservative and his party confounded his fellow pundits,
the pollsters and popular expectations to hold the PQ to a slim minority
government. And he may have failed to notice that the Kitchener seat was a
long-shot for the Ontario Liberals (although their finish was very disappointing)
and they won Vaughan, the other seat up for grabs (and held by the Conservatives federally) in resounding fashion.

1 comment:

"the national board can’t override it without asking the membership to pass a constitutional amendment" when it suits them, the national board has overwritten 'the rules' to serve big egos and other trifling causes. Tis not a time, when liberals are hugging 3rd place, to get bogged down in rules which are detrimental to the vocation the LPC wants: which is to get back to a form of national relevance in terms of voter support. They could have reduced the 41 day buffer to 21 without violating the spirit of the amendment, which was voted on by a small minority of people who can afford to fly to Ottawa to vote for 2 days.